Who dares wins

To travel around India the past month has been to come face-to-face with considerable angst over India's rotation policy in one-day internationals. What has made the whispers all the more mystifying is the fact that both Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell, masters of the team's destiny, are perfectly at ease with implementing different strategies, as they prefer to slug the rotation concept. Despite that, and a record that shows eight wins in 11 matches against pretty formidable opposition, there continue to be whinges about X being sent in as pinch-hitter or Y coming too low down the order.

A sense of perspective would be welcome. As Dravid and Chappell have stressed repeatedly after each game, win or loss, the accent is not on immediate results but on constructing a side which can at least emulate the efforts of the 2003 team that reached a World Cup final. When Chappell replaced John Wright, India were in freefall as a one-day outfit, an utterly predictable side easily second-guessed and beaten by quality opposition. After initial hiccups in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, where Chappell appeared intent on scrutinising every piece in India's bits-and-pieces puzzle, the home assignments saw relative stability, but with enough surprises - Irfan Pathan at No.3, Virender Sehwag at No.4 - to rattle the opposition and turn matches India's way.

What Dravid and Chappell, presumably with the blessing of the selection panel, are doing is hardly rocket science. Ahead of red-letter days - and the World Cup is the only event to plan for in the ODI calendar - it's imperative that back-up plans are in place. After the last World Cup, that was where India lost the plot. Some players grew fat on success, and the team's tactics became so telegraphed that opponents with a smidgen of imagination had no difficulty in derailing Plan A. More often than not, there was no Plan B.

Recent events south of the equator have again illustrated the value of bench strength. A Western Australian line-up missing the one bowler with international experience - Brad Williams has been suspended for the full season - routed South Africa by an innings in a four-day game, largely due to the efforts of a player - Shawn Gillies - plucked out of club cricket obscurity. Across the Tasman Sea, Australia's finest retained the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy while Glenn McGrath had his feet up on the recliner. His replacement, Stuart Clark, performed creditably in both games, and the unheralded Mick Lewis sealed the series with just about the finest over that you could hope to see at the death in a one-day match.

Both Clark and Lewis have been knocking around in domestic cricket for a few seasons now, and when asked to take the step up, they did so with few nerves and plenty of aplomb. The message sent out to other teams with the World Cup just over a year away was a chilling one: No McGrath, no Gillespie, no Kasprowicz, no worries. Already, the batting order has undergone major surgery, with Damien Martyn - who would waltz into any other Test or ODI side in the world - the most prominent casualty, and the replacements have slotted in seamlessly to ensure that the juggernaut loses no momentum.

No player has been more impressive than Michael Hussey over the past few months. Not content with being the best batsman on view in the NatWest Series, Hussey made best use of Justin Langer's injury and Michael Clarke's poor form to script two memorable Test centuries against the West Indies. In the limited-overs game, the stunning shot that raised the roof at the Telstra Dome in the ICC Super Series was emblematic of how well he has batted - a turbo-charged Michael Bevan coming lower down the order.

Those that decry experimentation would do well to look at the last World Cup when Andy Bichel, certainly not the first name on the teamsheet, turned in stellar performances with bat and ball to tilt matches against England and New Zealand. That was also the tournament that witnessed the emergence of Andrew Symonds as a big-hitting phenomenon, emphatically shutting up those who bemoaned the non-selection of a certain Stephen Rodger Waugh.

Despite the cynics, and there seem to be many, adapt or perish is very much the mantra in one-day cricket. India slid all the way down to the basement after the World Cup precisely because there were few fresh ideas or attempts to challenge players who had become complacent. As Australia have shown over the past few days - the once-hyped Mitchell Johnson replaces Brett Lee for the final match against New Zealand - you can never have too much bench strength. If a Jai P Yadav or a VRV Singh can reprise Lewis's heroics in the Caribbean in April 2007, the doubters will be well and truly silenced. In cricket, as with the commandos of the Special Air Service regiment, Who Dares Wins.